In India, a rise in surrogate births for West

NEW DELHI – When 24-year-old Komal Kapoor handed over the twins she had just borne to a visiting American couple last month, she said she felt “something like sadness.”

But that lasted just a few minutes.

“In my head I kept saying, ‘These are not my children, these are not my children,’ ” recalled Kapoor, a surrogate mother who lives in a New Delhi slum. After delivering what she called two “very beautiful, fair-skinned, black-haired babies” for the couple, she signed a document relinquishing all rights to the infants in return for a little over $8,000 — more than 12 times her annual earnings as a garment worker. “With the money, I want to secure my daughter’s future,” she said.

India, a nation of more than 1.2 billion people, has emerged as the preferred destination for a growing number of couples from around the world who are looking for a low-cost, trouble-free way of becoming parents. But a government-funded survey released this month said that in the absence of regulation, some unscrupulous agents are luring poor, uneducated women into signing surrogacy contracts that they do not fully understand.

While there are few statistics on the surrogacy industry there, India has become a hub for medical tourism because of the availability of advanced technology, the large number of medical professionals and the relatively low costs. “All this coupled with the huge number of poor women and lack of legal scrutiny has ensured the commercial surrogacy boom,” said Manasi Mishra, co-author of the survey.

She said many other developing countries either do not allow commercial surrogacy or have few sophisticated hospitals.

Many of the women in her study were bearing babies for couples in the United States and Britain. The report said some couples used Skype to periodically view the surrogate mother’s belly, and thus monitor the progress of the pregnancy. American couples often pay five or six times as much for a surrogate pregnancy in their own country as they do in India, according to doctors and industry officials there.

The new survey, done by the women’s advocacy group Center for Social Research, said there is “no fixed rule” for payments to surrogate mothers, which are “arbitrarily decided by the clinics.”

The women, the report said, are kept in special, guarded facilities and allowed limited social interaction during pregnancy. The rights of women who miscarry are not secured, it said.

Doctors, activists and agents say the surrogacy boom began with infertile Indian-origin couples in countries such as the United States, Britain and the United Arab Emirates seeking out women in India to bear their children.

At least half of the clients still belong to that group, Mishra told a news conference.

In most cases, the clients’ sperm and egg are implanted in the surrogate’s womb, with DNA tests done after the birth to prove the genetic links to the couple and ease the issuing of a foreign passport.

Doctors say the practice is growing among Indians, too. Earlier this month, one of Bollywood’s biggest stars, Shahrukh Khan, announced that his newborn child had been carried by a surrogate, bringing social respectability and even some trendiness to the practice. But the cost is still prohibitive in a country where a majority live on less than $2 a day.

“India is becoming a popular destination in the search for surrogate mothers, agencies are mushrooming, and now Bollywood stars are also giving the whole practice a stamp of social legitimacy. But it is frightening that all this is happening in a legal vacuum and without any monitoring,” said Ranjana Kumari, director of the Center for Social Research, which is based in New Delhi.

“Middlemen bring poor, uneducated women from the hinterland or from city slums with the lure of money. All this is being done under the facade of a noble cause of helping childless couples and supporting poor families.”

The group interviewed a total of 100 surrogate mothers in New Delhi and Mumbai for its survey, as well as commissioning parents, doctors, surrogacy agencies and others involved in the business. Most of them were married and had at least one child of their own.

The majority mentioned either poverty or their children’s education expenses as the reasons for agreeing to carry others’ children. Most women told interviewers that it was their decision to be surrogates, but sometimes they were also pressured by their husbands to earn money.

The India Council of Medical Research, a government body, introduced guidelines for accreditation, supervision and regulation of surrogacy and assisted-reproduction clinics in 2005.

Later, the government formulated draft legislation that incorporates these guidelines, but the bill has yet to be introduced in parliament.

Activists, doctors and surrogacy agencies are urging lawmakers to pass it quickly.